The media business is no longer about creating or even distributing content. It’s about controlling the platforms that create a marketplace for content and advertising.

I would better say that the media business is about controlling the platforms that create a place for publishing content and provide effective / efficient mechanisms to link advertising to content. The difference is not just semantics. The winning platform have to offer both features, not just one. Youtube, for instance, exploded as the best platform to publish video content, but it didn’t provide until now a convincing mechanism to link advertising to content. Same for Flickr re: photos, or DailyMotion again re: video.

But will ever exist a single winning platform for both publishing and advertising? Or the advertising platform (Google search) will always work as a meta-platform of the publishing platform (web as a whole)?